CT The Imperial Starfleet - fewer than a thousand ships?

That said- a Star Destroyer is vastly bigger than an aircraft carrier. Still, even at 1/10,000 the proportion, it's still a lot.

 

This is from Wookiepedia, but I think it's from the Atlas: "The Galactic Empire's territory at its peak consisted of some one and a half million member and conquered worlds, as well as sixty-nine million colonies, protectorates and puppet states spread throughout the entire galaxy, stretching from the borders of the Deep Core to at least Wild Space."

Given that Imperial ships were not that uncommon to see above worlds of the Empire; 25,000 SD's and a million warships seems like a practical number.

 

It is indeed from the Atlas. In total, an estimated nearly 1 billion systems within the Galaxy (most of which would have been within the Empire's borders) "have someone living in them" - it's ones with a population above a certain level, that qualify as "colonies, protectorates, etc" and thus getting representation.

As Admiral Ozzel puts it in ESB: "My Lord, there are so many uncharted settlements..."

 

Nice! That's why things like there being five numbered fleets in the Balck Fleet Crises (and I LOVE that trilogy) drive me NUTS. Your telling me the New Republic is trying to establish their government with a few hundred ships? The topper is when the New Republic has no ships to send to Corellia in the Corellian Trilogy because they're all in refit? C'mon man!

 

At the time that book was written the Imperial Remnant was said to be mythical.

When Specter of the Past clarified that it was alive and well- it was retconned that much of the fleet was keeping the Remnant from taking advantage of the situation.

 

But again the rebels said that the imperial fleet was spread out in the galaxy, looking for them, so the DS2 would be mostly unprotected. With these many ships, 25 000 looking or 24 900, makes very little difference. But the rebels sure seemed surprised that 50 ships were there.

As for ESB, I do not agree, if other ships were also looking, Vader would have called them in when he knew about Hoth.
Also, Ozzel said that they had thousands of probe droids searching the galaxy, not ships. We see one ISD send of several probe droids in the opening. So the movie does not indicate that any other ships were involved in the search.

Well the empire is all about mad overkill aren't they? Consider, building a space station the size of a moon and that can blow up planets! Of that isn't overkill, I don't know what would be.

In closing, mostly I view this as the writer of the film having not really thought about the numbers that would be required in galactic wars. Take AotC for ex, 1,2 million clone troopers would be inadequate for a war on a planetary scale, much less a galactic one.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

I'm confused as to what you are saying about the Endor fleet. The Rebels no doubt had some recon done on the Endor system and saw that the Executer and a handful of SD's were stationed there (like when the Tybirium shuttle arrived). Are you meaning that by saying the Imperial fleet was spread throughout the galaxy that they should have expected 100 SD's in the Endor system? See the post above about the size of the galaxy, if the fleet was deployed across the galaxy, these's not enough ships to come close to have even one ship per system. Need some clarification as to what your getting at.

Well Vader was playing a hunch about Hoth, his officers did not concur that the Rebel base was there, so he may not have wanted to call in additional resources for a wild goose chase. Also, The Death Squadron should have been more than enough to mop up Hoth. Or maybe he planned to call in additional ships when he got an idea of what they were dealing with on Hoth, but after Ozzel came out of lightspeed too close to the planet there was no point as action had to be taken immediately. The movie also doesn't give you any indication that the rest of the Imperial fleet WASN'T actively looking for the Rebels, in fact I would just assume that this was a standing order. Maybe not searching the galaxy like the Death Squadron may have been, but I'm sure all ships had their ears to the ground as they say.

That always bugged me about AOTC as well. It would have given them enough troops for action on Geonosis, but not a galactic scale ground war.

 

Shatterpoint does allude to the clones being overstretched.

 

Keep in mind that the New Republic wasn't the same galactic military force that the Empire was. In Before the Storm, it mentions that there were many Senators that saw the creation of the NR Fifth Fleet as a threat that the New Republic was becoming an offensive force. Based on this, I always thought that the New Republic allowed and relied on member systems maintaining their own defense forces and kept only a handful of fleets in its navy. Which is why the Black Fleet (44 Imperial ships + Yevathan Forces) were such a threat at the time according to the BFCT. This agrees with the plot point in the CT that no NR Navy ships were available during the conflict and they had to borrow Bakuran defense forces.

 

That's a good point. It's to be expected that the New Republic would have a smaller navy than the Empire, however going from a million vessels to a few hundred is hard to fathom. Member states possessing their own navies is a valid point (wasn't that a major plot point in the Legacy of the Jedi series?), but still there is a lack of consistency within the books.

 

My point is this, according to the rebels, the imperial fleet is spread out across the galaxy in an attempt to engage them. For that reason the DS2 is largely undefended. So the rebels think that basically ALL of the ISD's are out looking for them.
But if the empire has 25 000 of them and the rebels have 50-60 ships, the empire could easily have put 100 ISD's at Endor and that would not weaken their ability to seach the galaxy to any great extent. But the rebels are very suprised that there is 40-50 ISD at Endor. Why? With the number the empire has to draw upon, that many or even twice that, would be a tiny percentage of the whole fleet.
Also, Vader seemed suprised when Palpatine ordered the fleet to the far side of Endor and asked "What about the rebel fleet?"
So it seems that he was expecting the fleet at Endor to act against the rebels in some way. But again if they have 24 950 ISD's elesewhere, why would Vader think that the fleet at Endor would be the ones to deal with the rebels?

[/QUOTE]

Not quite correct, it was only Ozzel that objected, Piett was the one who brought the data to Ozzel's attention, and to Vader as well. So both Vader and Piett agreed that Hoth was the place. And Vader sure didn't sound like it was just a guess on his part..
"THAT'S IT, the Rebels are there!" Does not sound like a man just guessing. And when Ozzel tried to object, Vader cut him off and ordered the fleet to Hoth. If he had other ships to draw upon, it makes no sense not to use them.
And again Ozzel says that they have thousands of probe droids searching the galaxy, if they had thousands of ships he would have said that.

Bye for now.
The Guardíng Dark

 

25,000 ISDs is still the official number, so it is futile to dispute it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Destroyer

 

That said, one can still say it's "only official in the alternate SW universe that is the EU"

A bit dog-in-the-manger, but it's still a valid perspective.

 

I agree with you. I'm sort of a 'Gospel according to Lucas' kind of guy -

I like my evidence from the films, although this stretches to include the Holiday Special and the two Ewok tv movies of course.

The EU is 'secondary' evidence. It certainly counts, but it's not admissible in a court of law.

 

The "seen once and never again" Holiday Special... LOL..

 

I've watched it three times now - it gets better with every viewing.

You'll think I'm joking, but I'm deadly serious. It's an avant-garde masterpiece, and Bea Arthur's song is the most beautiful song about friendship ever performed on Tatooine.

 

Is it somewhere online where I can refresh my memory? Honestly, it's been several fortnights since I've even thought of that...

 

My particular copy is the only one which survives from the day Lucas ran wild in the Skywalker Ranch car park, smashing all the vhs tapes with hammers.

I have been told that there is a so-called 'torrent' version floating around, but I couldn't confirm that, being unaware of the existence of such technology.

 

Give the Chinese a bit of time... they'll find it and replicate it for all to enjoy again. Purchasable on any street corner for less that $5.

 

Well feel free to draw your own conclusions. But the Empire wanted the Rebel fleet to attack the DSII, so it makes sense that they would not station a large defense fleet at or near Endor in order to make an attack on the DSII feasible for the Rebels.

It would only make sense that the Rebels had conducted some reconnaissance of the Endor system prior to the attack. What they probably found is similar to what we saw when the shuttle Tydirium entered the Endor system: an Executer class and a handful of SD’s. The Rebel fleet is surprised at the strength of the Imperial fleet when they arrived at Endor because it is a much larger force than they were expecting.

Vader’s comments don’t mean much the way I look at it. Perhaps he wanted to send a fleet to engage the Rebels near Sullust before they attacked the DSII, perhaps he was surprised the Emperor wished to send the Endor fleet to the far side of the moon and leave the DSII even more vulnerable.

That’s fair enough. I would argue that the Death Squadron was of sufficient size to handle the situation, that Vader would not want to wait to assemble a larger fleet, and would not want to send in a closer fleet first because he wanted to handle the situation personally.

I assume they had thousands of probe droids searching the galaxy specifically to find the Rebel base, while the million warships were on the lookout for Rebel holdouts, but it was not their primary mission.

Is it really "alternate"? The EU includes all primary canon sources like the movies does it not? Or are you talking about the cases were the movies and TV shows contradict the novels? IMO the EU won't be "alternate" until main plot points contained in the novels are changed with the sequel trilogy.

 

It does include the movies, yes- in the sense that in the "EU-verse" all the events shown in the "movie-verse" are presumed to have happened.

 

One thing that I've always wondered. If the Imperial Navy had over a million warships, which I believe it would have needed given the size of the Empire, how would the Naval Command have had the resources to coordinate the efforts of its ships? For instance, Grand Admirals may have been asked a question and not know what ship they were dealing with, or what system they were talking about. It would have required an incredibly structured tiered system of command. Same goes for coordinating the war efforts during the Vong invasion, it would take an incomprehensible command structure.

 

I would imagine that the Imperial Navy had theaters of operation just like during WWII. Commanders were responsible for operations within their theater - both strategic and tactical. The Navy would then have had to have a centralized strategic command that managed overall strategy across systems - and for allocating resources where/when necessary...

 

"Oversectors" were used during the Clone Wars- 20 Oversectors across the galaxy.

At least one of which was Oversector Black Sword - hence the Black Fleet.

 

If you guys haven't read it yet, the Essential Atlas is a truly awesome read. It gives a wonderful sense of scale to the galaxy, including population, colony expansion, fleet strengths and borders between the various regions.